I begin to wonder what kind of failing it can be in me that I scarcely
ever respond feelingly to the work of Peter Brook. I am impressed by the
apparently instinctive connection with the human dimension of thoughts,
emotions and actions, even when the characters depicted may be gods. I
admire the style which combines a sense of the ritual of storytelling with,
again, a fundamental humanity forming a direct communal bond between performers
and audience. But the strength of feeling the pieces elicit always seems
well within the limits of decorum.

This is especially apparent when, as here, the subject contains a dimension
of the numinous. The life of Tierno Bokar, a Sufi teacher in the Mali area
of French West Africa in the early 20th century, was filled with the vital
importance of tolerance and reflection. His teachings in his own Sufi school
emphasised as much, and when he at length embraced as master a man from
a different branch of the tradition, leading to his expulsion from his
home of Bandiagara, he accepted with stoicism such a verdict and continued
to teach consideration. More than once Marie-Hélène Estienne's
text has Tierno explain, "There are three truths: my truth, your truth
and the truth."

The 100-minute piece begins as little more than a series of illustrative
episodes, almost parables. Gradually, a larger narrative builds up: of
Tierno and his students, one of whom leaves for a more formal education
and a post in the French colonial administration before forsaking it to
return and study spirituality; of the doctrinal strife centring on whether
a devotional prayer should be recited eleven or twelve times; of Tierno's
own search for the truth and preparedness to be persuaded, and of the social
pressures both amongst the Malians and between them and the colonists.
Sotigui Kouyaté is at once grave and serene as Tierno; Pitcho Womba
Konga also impresses as Hamallah, the younger man who becomes the master's
master.

It's performed (in French) with unobtrusive delicacy, beautifully accompanied
on a number of traditional musical instruments, and all deeply significant.
But surely this is a message that needs to be borne in with a visceral
conviction to match its intellectual persuasiveness, and this is what Brook's
style seems to me to eschew.